Someone that reviewed this on IMDb titled their review “Boring From Another Planet”. Well, that’s pretty accurate.

It’s also a perfect film to be torn apart on Mystery Sceince Theater 3000.

But if I’m being honest, this film does have one saving grace: James Karen. I love that guy. I mean he’s great in everything, even with really minor roles. I even enjoyed his Pathmark commercials, which I’d only see when visiting my family in New York City back in the ’80s.

Apart from Karen though, everything else about this picture is dead on arrival. I usually like stuff from New World Pictures too but this is well below their respectable schlock level.

The story revolves around this alien that was mummified and asleep in King Tut’s tomb but he’s now been awaken, centuries later. I guess this is kind of like a slasher picture but it is severely light on the slashing and it only sort of fits that in how the mummy alien just sort of lurks in the shadows and watches young couple struggling to go beyond first base.

The special effects in this are bad between the look of the alien and the post production work on trying to make the magical bits come to life.

Also, the acting is of the ’80s TV movie quality. It’s not atrocious or anything but it makes Airwolf look like Dunkirk, if I’m comparing.

This was a dud on nearly every level. It’s not interesting, it’s executed poorly and it’s only worth a watch if you check out the MST3K version.

Argosy Films, Canadian Film Development Corporation, Crown International Pictures, 101 Minutes

Review:

“This man’s dangerous. This little joyride he’s on is undermining the entire balance of this country.” – Hawkins

Even for 1984 standards, this movie is of such poor quality that I was surprised to find out that this was released theatrically and not just made for TV as a CBS “movie of the week”.

The film stars Lee Majors and Burgess Meredith as two dudes way past their prime but unable to get rid of their youthful tendencies.

The Last Chase takes place in a dystopian future where crazy environmentalists rule society and have outlawed vehicles. Majors plays a former race car driver that has been secretly building a new race car in his garage for twenty years. Burgess Meredith plays an old man that used to be a fighter pilot back when jets were still in use. Majors and some teenage sidekick take his race car on a cross country joyride that angers the fascist government, who then sends in old ass Burgess Meredith to catch these speed demon criminals in a fighter jet.

Does the premise sound awful? It should, because it is.

So Meredith hunts down Majors, shoots at him and we get an elderly vehicular duel with a bunch of unnecessary non-action scenes thrown in to break up the tension that doesn’t actually exist in this picture. I’m not sure what the point of this movie was but at least I finally got to see a Penguin fly.

Anyway, this was featured on the original first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and this isn’t one of the films that the revisited once the show went national on Comedy Central. That’s probably because it bored Joel and the ‘Bots to tears the first time.

Rating: 4/10Pairs well with: Death Race 2000 and Cannonball, both of which are much, much better than this.

“[Referring to a liquid he has] I’ve made this especially for you, Vicki.” – H.W. Manfred

The Deadly Bees has a really low rating on IMDb and pretty much everywhere else you might look. Despite what seems to be most people’s disdain for the film, I actually like it.

I think this may be due to my love of British horror from this era but I’ll always have a pretty big soft spot for Amicus Productions, along with Hammer Films: the two studios that really made their mark in the ’60s and ’70s and epitomize the second wave of classic horror.

The Deadly Bees was also lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000 in one of the later seasons. I understand why it was rife with material to riff but there is still something truly eerie and effective about the film.

The biggest factor working against the movie is the special effects where the bee attacks are concerned. I mean, even for the ’60s, it’s kind of horrible. All of these scenes are comprised of victims flailing around, simulating a bee attack with yellowish bee blobs superimposed over the screen. It’s really bizarre looking and I know that funds on these sort of pictures were very limited but it bogs the rest of the film down in its cheap hokiness.

The plot is actually decent, most of the characters are good and there is a predictable twist at the end but I think it still works and it doesn’t diminish the feeling of dread when the damsel is in mortal danger.

The film also features Michael Ripper and Michael Gwynn, two actors that you’d see pop up in several Amicus and Hammer films.

I thought that Suzanne Leigh was pretty good in this and put in a convincing performance. She truly is an old school beauty and with that, has an enchanting presence.

Guy Doleman did a good job too, as you never really knew where he stood in the story. Was he an evil bastard or was he just kind of a jerk?

The Deadly Bees does have some issues but I don’t think any of them outweigh the positives to the point that this deserves a 3.6 out of 10 on IMDb. I think that its inclusion on MST3K has negatively effected the public’s view of the film. It’s far from the worst movie that you’ll see on MST3K.

Rating: 5.25/10Pairs well with: other Amicus and Hammer horror films of the ’60s and ’70s.

“Slowly…and with horror the parents realized THEIR CHILDREN WERE THE SLAVES OF ‘THE THING’ FROM OUTER SPACE!” – tagline

This film has an incredibly low rating on IMDb. I mean, I guess I get it, as it’s not a good movie or even well made. However, I think it’s a bit better than a 3.7 out of 10.

The film is fairly imaginative, I actually liked the story and for a movie with a bunch of kids in it, they aren’t too annoying. Plus, ’50s alien sci-fi schlock is just a cup of tea that I like to sip on the reg.

The Space Children was showcased in one of the later seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and this certainly deserves that sort of treatment but it isn’t as bad as most of the ’50s sci-fi fare that they’ve riffed on the show.

The story is about this alien brain that comes to Earth and hides out in a cave on the beach. Nearby, the government has a nuclear weapons facility. Now the nuclear missile looks more like a space rocket but we’ll ignore that. Anyway, the alien brain takes over the minds of the children of the scientists working on the nuclear weapon. It uses the kids to sabotage the nuke and we later learn that other alien brains did the same thing to other kids in other countries so that no one had nuclear weapons. While it sounds over the top and cheesy, it’s still a fun plot that worked and this felt like a smarter movie than some run of the mill alien invasion picture.

It’s a really short film and there isn’t much to hate about it. Plus, it was directed by Jack Arnold, who did the first two Creature From the Black Lagoon movies, This Island Earth and other pictures in the sci-fi genre.

Golden State Productions, Selma Enterprises, American International Pictures, 77 Minutes

Review:

“I hate this place. I hate the sound of the ocean. I hate you.” – Andrea Talbott

This film suffers greatly in that it doesn’t feature enough of the She-Creature.

While I like the creature design for the time, which kind of looks like the Gillman mixed with a bug and the demon from Night of the Demon, it’s truly underutilized. But that’s also not too uncommon with creature features from the era. Especially those made for barely a dime and distributed by American International Pictures.

This, like many films of its type, was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is rife with riffing material and it makes for a good episode. However, as a motion picture trying to stand on its own, this really is a boring dud.

The acting, directing and just about everything else is at the level one would expect from this sort of picture. There is nothing unique to help it stand out and without it being the focus of an MST3K episode, it probably would have been lost to time.

This certainly isn’t a must watch movie, even for fans of the genre and era. It’s not a complete waste of time though, either. But if you do give it a chance, you should probably just watch the MST3K episode.

Rating: 2.5/10Pairs well with: Voodoo Woman, It! The Terror From Beyond Space and The Horror of Party Beach.

“If you kill me, someone just like me – or worse – will become my replacement. I am inevitable!” – Carver

How the hell did James Earl Jones fall so low that they got him to agree to be in this movie just a year after Return of the Jedi? Sure, he bounced back but I can’t imagine many actors bouncing back after this film. Maybe he just had the benefit of no one seeing this.

This also had Kim Cattrall and Rae Dawn Chong but this was before either of them got more famous going into the late ’80s. It also features John Diehl, a guy I loved on Miami Vice until they ruined the show by killing him off, and a small role for Kane Hodder, who would become the longest running Jason Voorhees actor just a few years later.

City Limits was written by Don Keith Opper, who also has a small role in the film. He didn’t write a very good script here but he would follow this up with the Critters film series, which has had some longevity over the years since the first one came out and it even spawned a new television series just this year.

This is a post-apocalyptic film, one of probably hundreds in an era where these things were being made faster than McDonald’s can print Monopoly game pieces. It’s a genre and formula I like but this is like most of those films, unfortunately, a boring, bland dud that borrows so heavily from other places that it doesn’t have an identity of its own.

City Limits was featured on Mystery Science Theater and for good reason. It’s also probably one of the MST3K films that featured a pretty well known cast. It’s a film rife with material for riffing though.

As bad and vanilla as this is, it’s certainly not the worse that the post-apocalyptic genre has to offer. It’s pure ’80s, low budget, sci-fi schlock but it’s a bit endearing because of that. However, City Limits will probably only be enjoyed by people that are into that sort of thing.

Rating: 3.5/10Pairs well with: other early to mid ’80s post-apocalyptic schlock.

“Okay Buzz you’re right. To hell with waiting for a bunch of slide-rule jockeys. We used to fix the airplanes we flew with paperclips. Lets get into our hard suits and fix this bird.” – Jim Pruett

This is probably the most critically acclaimed film ever to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, as it is the only picture out of the 200-plus that won an Academy Award. In the case of this movie, it won for visual effects.

That being said, this is still a movie worth riffing, as it is dreadfully boring, slow and despite being full of some good actors, none of the performances really hit their mark.

Originally titled Marooned in 1969, this movie was re-released on VHS around 1990 as Space Travelers. The VHS version is the one that I saw, as it’s the version that MST3K showcased.

I’m not sure if there’s much difference between the two versions of the film but MST3K didn’t have time to fit in a 134 minute picture, so what I did see was edited down. As boring and as slow as this was, I couldn’t imagine watching a version that would be 44 minutes longer than the roughly 90 minutes I saw. But maybe that extra time made the story more interesting.

Still, this is a real dud that wasn’t saved by its good effects, even for its time.

Maybe this was fairly original in the late ’60s and being that it came out during the height of the space race era, it could’ve connected with audiences that were still dreaming about space travel and exploration. But this did come out a year after 2001: A Space Odyssey and I find it hard to believe that even in 1969, that this film would even be in conversations with that one as far as being a top notch sci-fi adventure.